


ask me no questions (and i'll tell you no lies)

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Consent Issues, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 13:03:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4565649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone is always saying it’s dangerous to keep her friendship with Fitz, that Grant will only let it slide so long before he decides he doesn’t appreciate her spending so much time with another man. If that happens, the best case scenario will be their separation, the worst … well, she has today to remind her of the worst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ask me no questions (and i'll tell you no lies)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shineyma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/gifts).



> A special birthday fic for Amy! Which is the least I can give her after all the AMAZING gifts she gives this fandom. <3

He’s so still next to her, beneath her, that she thinks he fell asleep long ago and is naturally surprised when he speaks into the darkness.

“Fitz doesn’t like me.”

Jemma tenses. She can’t help it. Everyone is always saying it’s dangerous to keep her friendship with Fitz, that Grant will only let it slide so long before he decides he doesn’t appreciate her spending so much time with another man. If that happens, the best case scenario will be their separation, the worst … well, she has today to remind her of the worst.

A hand slides into her hair, kneading at the back of her scalp. “Calm down,” he soothes, and kisses her face to calm her. She doesn’t know where he means to aim, but the kiss lands on her eyebrow.

“He’s protective,” she says, voicing the defense she’s often thought over, “always has been. Like a brother.”

Grant laughs, nearly shaking her off him with the force of it. His arms come up around her to keep her in place.

“He didn’t like the way Anderson was treating me, that’s all,” she says softly once he’s finished.

“Yeah,” Grant agrees darkly, “neither did I.”

She shivers, curling tighter in his arms. Anderson is dead now, of course. He was flirting - if such blatant overtures can be called that. She doesn’t know what he thought. Perhaps he believed the ugly rumors that there is something between her and Fitz, and thought he could convince her to hide a relationship from Grant. Perhaps he simply had no idea that not all specialists believe in sharing. It doesn’t matter, really. Grant happened by when he was making another attempt and made swift work of him. Fitz was there as well, working late with her. He and Grant traded some characteristically short words with each other. Jemma’s not certain what they were, she was rather preoccupied with Anderson’s blood pooling out over the once-sterile floor.

Grant’s hand slides up and down her back in a gentle circuit. “I’m glad he called me.”

That startles Jemma right out of the memory. “ _Fitz_ called you?”

She can hear the grin in his voice. “Yeah. Said if I didn’t take care of Anderson, he’d do it for me. I almost wish I’d let him too. He probably would’ve come up with something a lot more painful than a bullet to the chest.”

Jemma lays her ear down over Grant’s heart and slides her hands up over the muscles of his chest to grip his shoulders tight. So much has changed since the Chitauri invaded. Silly as it is, she had hoped Fitz might stay the same sweet, gentle scientist she knew. Oh, he can be a prat at times, but he’s really soft underneath it all. Or was.

“He’s protective,” she says again, more as an excuse for Fitz’s potential crimes than an explanation for Grant’s benefit.

Grant’s hips shift under her and she imagines from his words that he’s on the verge of pouting. “So he should love me. I _killed_ a guy for you - hell, I saved your _life_. I’m everything an overprotective big brother could want. You know, in the world where we pretend that’s really all he is to you.”

Jemma presses her lips to his chest in an approximation of a kiss. His nipple is hard at the corner of her mouth. “I think that might be the problem,” she confesses.

“How’s that?”

Though she can’t see him at all in the dark, she rests her chin on his collarbone as though she can. “He thinks I’m sleeping with you out of a sense of obligation.”

Grant’s hum makes her teeth hurt. His knee shifts ever so slightly between her legs, causing a twinge in her still-sensitive clit. She hisses in a breath.

His hands find her face, feeling the expression he can’t see. “Are you?”

She wishes, more than anything, that it was an easy answer. Not for killing Anderson, surely, and she would very much like to believe that she isn’t carrying on with him solely for the protection his name imbues. Their beginning, however, is much more murky.

They met in the midst of the Five Day War, when Earth was still staggering under the might of the Chitauri. He was the specialist assigned to move her and Fitz safely to a compound in the Arctic where HYDRA - _HYDRA_ of all things - was studying Chitauri corpses recovered from New York. Captain America’s former enemies had come out of the shadows - perhaps to save the world, perhaps out of joy at seeing him fall, no one can say for certain - but save the world they did. And Grant, in particular, saved Jemma.

Nearly a week later, when the war was done and she and Fitz - and the Chitauri corpses - were being moved back to the Sandbox, Grant leapt from a plane to save her from the disease she’d contracted during one of the autopsies. She’d still been wary of him then, uncertain of the way things would be with the world still staggering from alien invasion and HYDRA in control of SHIELD, but he saved her and she was grateful and so happy to be alive. And he was, honestly, attractive. She would have been blind not to see that the moment they met.

She’d like to say she slept with him for his face or his body or even that cutting sense of humor he drove Fitz mad with, but she cannot be sure. No matter how many times she replays that first time in her head, she has no idea why. Did she feel she owed it to him? That it was expected of her, the natural price to pay for her life? And if that first instance was out of obligation, what of the rest? Is there some sort of cascade effect, carrying her initial reasons down through all their sexual encounters to come?

She doesn’t know.

“No,” she says.

Grant’s hands are firm on her cheeks, keeping her from kissing him. Glad as she is he can’t see her face, she wishes she could see his. It seems like an eternity before his hands move into her hair, allowing her room to find his mouth in the dark. She misses the first time, and then misses again several more on purpose. He’s nearly writhing beneath her by the time she lifts herself up, aligning her hips with his and reaching between them to position him correctly.

The noise he makes as her hand closes around him is very nearly pained. She has no word to describe it - it’s not a moan, not a grunt, not a whine, just a _sound_. A sound that is entirely _male_. She smiles as she lowers herself onto him. Her nerves are still on edge and she has to brace herself against his shoulders. His hands are tight around her hips, helping her keep gravity at bay when her knees are going weak.

“It’s okay, baby,” he says, his thumbs tracing circles over the bones of her hips and his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her rear. “Nice and slow.”

She has no trouble finding a name for her own response. It is most definitely a whine.

She takes deep breaths once he’s fully inside her, allows herself ample time to grow reacquainted with his girth. His fingers keep up their lazy inspection of her sides, seemingly in no hurry to be moving on with things.

He’s never pushed her, never demanded more than she was willing to give. He is terribly sweet for a cold blooded murderer. He held her hand when the Academy memorial was dedicated and never complains when her nightmares leave her sobbing into his chest.

“Jem?” he prods. She’s been still for a terribly long time. Likely she’s being a little cruel.

“Nothing,” she says, though she doesn’t move. “Only…”

His fingers twitch ever so slightly. She wonders if he’s afraid of what she might say. Odd the way life goes. She never could have anticipated the Chitauri or HYDRA, never would have dreamed she would one day be able to hold a world-class specialist in fearful anticipation.

“I’m happy,” she says, marveling at the words. Who knew the world nearly ending would land her here? She nearly laughs over it, but instead decides to move before Grant can find a response.

When he does discover his voice again, it is to say her name again and again, almost like a chant, almost like a prayer. She thinks he might be happy too.


End file.
